On November 21 2017 07:22 Loco wrote:
Also, I've hung around a lot of nihilistic types and the truth is that they are never truly nihilists. The possessive nature of ideas and our desire for certainty precludes it. These people believe they have abandoned grand narratives and are absolutely lucid but they are still fanatics, most of them have uncritically embraced a greedy reductionism or scientism. If there's one thing Peterson gets right it's the power of myths or mimetic desire which no one ever manages to escape unless they end their lives. Even the most staunch nihilist carries a bunch of illusions to confirm and take pride in their conception of the world. At its worst they'll become ill due to the inhibition of action, and they'll project their ills onto the world.
I never heard of mimetic desire before. Pretty cool. There is definitely always some group I would love to be a part of and on the Peterson front there are always going to be archetypes that I admire. I could always shave my head and start making my own clothes but it still would have been influenced by someone or something. I could move into the forest but I like going out to dinner and hanging out with friends. I suppose "true nihilism" as you define it isn't for me and it probably isn't for anyone.
On November 21 2017 05:30 Loco wrote:
Nihilism isn't "the ultimate truth" nor is subjectivism the (only) alternative to objectivism. If you want to know what's truly at the root of everything harmful in this world it is this kind of binary thinking that is assumed as self-evident. If you want to expand your thinking, read "El arbol del conocimiento" by Humberto Maturana and "Introducción al pensamiento complejo " by Edgar Morin. I can quite confidently say that these works could have a life changing influence on you if you give them the time.
I agree about the destructive nature of nihilism though, and I think that destructiveness is not a sign of having found the truth but rather a sign of not being embodied in truth, in other words it distorts (displaces) reality, which is co-constructed. The question of meaning is answered by Merleau-Ponty when he said that we are condemned to meaning -- it is irrelevant whether meaning exists independent of us or not.
It was a snarky statement that I was 100% sure you would reply to
Will read El arbol del conocimiento, ill let you know what I think soon.
I dont think ignorance causes inaction, it should but it doesnt, and about the good that Peterson does is mostly about the "clean your room" thing, sort yourself out before you go and riot trying to social engineer the world, I think you like drone see more danger in the right than in the left currently thats why you dislike Peterson more than his leftist counterparts and I strongly disagree with that notion.
And yes its bickering and shallow but millions and millions have died on that cross, It shouldnt be just tossed aside as not worth the thought
On November 21 2017 07:22 Loco wrote:
Also, I've hung around a lot of nihilistic types and the truth is that they are never truly nihilists. The possessive nature of ideas and our desire for certainty precludes it. These people believe they have abandoned grand narratives and are absolutely lucid but they are still fanatics, most of them have uncritically embraced a greedy reductionism or scientism. If there's one thing Peterson gets right it's the power of myths or mimetic desire which no one ever manages to escape unless they end their lives. Even the most staunch nihilist carries a bunch of illusions to confirm and take pride in their conception of the world. At its worst they'll become ill due to the inhibition of action, and they'll project their ills onto the world.
I never heard of mimetic desire before. Pretty cool. There is definitely always some group I would love to be a part of and on the Peterson front there are always going to be archetypes that I admire. I could always shave my head and start making my own clothes but it still would have been influenced by someone or something. I could move into the forest but I like going out to dinner and hanging out with friends. I suppose "true nihilism" as you define it isn't for me and it probably isn't for anyone.
Define inhibition of action please.
"A major role of the brain is to organize behaviors, ie, action. There is inhibition of action when behaviors become impossible, and this is deleterious to health. This happens when an instinctive behavior (such as fight or flight) is impossible, when acting is useless, when a danger cannot be predicted, or when no previous response pattern exists to direct action. In these situations, a brain system, the système inhibiteur de l'action, or behavioral inhibition system (BIS), is activated and stimulates the neuroendocrine responses that were described by Walter Cannon in the 1920s and Hans Selye in the 1930s and 1940s." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3984888/
I think you've already seen it demonstrated in "My Uncle from America", this is a concept I learned from Laborit. Understanding this was the beginning of my recovery after many years of ill-health. Laborit also simultaneously got me out of my old reductionist, nihilistic thoughts about the world by introducing me to systems thinking and cybernetics.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On November 21 2017 05:30 Loco wrote:
Nihilism isn't "the ultimate truth" nor is subjectivism the (only) alternative to objectivism. If you want to know what's truly at the root of everything harmful in this world it is this kind of binary thinking that is assumed as self-evident. If you want to expand your thinking, read "El arbol del conocimiento" by Humberto Maturana and "Introducción al pensamiento complejo " by Edgar Morin. I can quite confidently say that these works could have a life changing influence on you if you give them the time.
I agree about the destructive nature of nihilism though, and I think that destructiveness is not a sign of having found the truth but rather a sign of not being embodied in truth, in other words it distorts (displaces) reality, which is co-constructed. The question of meaning is answered by Merleau-Ponty when he said that we are condemned to meaning -- it is irrelevant whether meaning exists independent of us or not.
It was a snarky statement that I was 100% sure you would reply to
Will read El arbol del conocimiento, ill let you know what I think soon.
I dont think ignorance causes inaction, it should but it doesnt, and about the good that Peterson does is mostly about the "clean your room" thing, sort yourself out before you go and riot trying to social engineer the world, I think you like drone see more danger in the right than in the left currently thats why you dislike Peterson more than his leftist counterparts and I strongly disagree with that notion.
Those things are good when you look at them in isolation, but they don't work like that. He turns into a father figure to the people for whom this advice really made a difference, which inspires blind devotion in those who have no experience with fanaticism and have never been disillusioned before. And when you combine that with the fact that people are not educated about media ecology you have a recipe for disaster.
And yes its bickering and shallow but millions and millions have died on that cross, It shouldnt be just tossed aside as not worth the thought
And it will keep happening for as long as people act out unconscious patterns of behavior based on their misapprehensions about the world. It just feeds tribalistic behavior which gets rationalized as necessary and done "for the greater good". It is when you actually give it a thought that you stop the positive feedback loop. Those who are fervously fighting this culture war are the ones who aren't really giving it enough thought. The main fight the human species must be fighting at the moment considering the precariousness of our position is a paradigmatic one, but everyone is just too zoomed in and animated by trivialities.
I think there is danger on both sides, but the issue with free speech is massively overplayed. "Neo-Marxists" aren't creating an Orwellian world. People whose primary concern is free speech have more freedom of speech than ever. Everyone is free to create blogs, youtube channels, etc, to express their opinions. There are a ton of people on the left who do value free speech considerably but who also prioritize the well-being of minority groups, while people on the right value their free speech above all and think the very concept of social justice is bankrupt. That's a lot more extreme. I think people on the left who have self-radicalized are more salvageable than those on the right, but ultimately, anyone who is stuck with a binary "us vs them" mentality is a danger to themselves and others. Complex issues are not going to be understood and resolved with that kind of thinking. People on the right are the ones who are most resistant to acknowledging the complexity of things however.
Btw, if Jordan Peterson keeps spamming his twitter with the Laurier story and fails to talk about Net Neutrality real soon, that'll say a lot about the supposed nobility of his agenda.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
I think the right is fueled by the tribalistic need to protect their own, and the left is driven by wanted to protect "the weak", so I agree that hard-right are less salvagable I think the motivation comes from something more primal however I think as a potential for unintentional destruction the left is far worse simply because of economics and history supports this point.
I was going to type that being idle and allow those ideologies to cycle felt morally wrong but in reality I dont think the true motivation is to help rather than being persuaded by the same reason everyone falls into that bickering.
Didn't watch the whole vid, but its always been a bit funny to me that the general concept of "white race" is considered tall, blonde males with blue eyes and considered "western civilization", while those are actually Slavic & Nordic tribes e.g. nothing to do with Western Civilization.
the nazi party in greece does all the stuff mentioned in the video (not too great with the memes tho), especially after they got 7% and got into parliament. Of course they can't erase their past or easily stop all their goons from nazi saluting etc and their no2 even has a huge swastika tatoo, but they're really trying hard. They're currently on trial after a number of violent attacks that escalated with stabbing a known (to them) antifascist while he was out eating with his gf.
From where I'm standing the white nationalists are a serious threat and to suggest that antifa are comparable is laughable. Take the worst antifa member and assume they're all like that, they'd still be a bunch of uncoordinated idiots, while a political party like golden dawn is an army of apes ready to mindlessly do anything their leader says (they even swear on it in their torch holding initiation process)
new shit has come to light... a-and... shit! man...
On November 22 2017 09:24 Loco wrote:
Curious to hear your thoughts on this video Baal, though you have probably already seen it. You can choose spanish CC subtitles FYI.
I agree with pretty much all of it, I recently realized that there is actually a white supremacy movement and indeed many famous rightists are playing into their hands.
I think something extremely important is how he admits paranoia because that is the reason why centrist are leaning to the right, becaues its a response to the madness and paranoia of the left that unlike white supremcist, they dont hide it. just a couple of days ago, some famous rapper called Vanessa Selbts, who is a SJW, a racist and like a dozen other poker players who clearly aren't
Thats why I took issue when you called JBP a raging sexist, you are inadvertedly making the equality cause you pursue the greatest disservice by lower the bar, so people will just think its leftist hysteria and as long as these overreactions keep happening the hard right will keep pulling centrist.
The only thing I disagree with the video is about deplataforming them on podcasts and shit, invite them and throroughly debate them and dismantelate their ideas, being "the town idiot" is less appealing to youth than some obscure un-mentionable group nobody speaks about.
On November 22 2017 19:11 lebowski wrote:
From where I'm standing the white nationalists are a serious threat and to suggest that antifa are comparable is laughable. Take the worst antifa member and assume they're all like that, they'd still be a bunch of uncoordinated idiots, while a political party like golden dawn is an army of apes ready to mindlessly do anything their leader says (they even swear on it in their torch holding initiation process)
But Antifa is an equally violent group that the left refuses to disavow because " they fight fascist"
If I recall correctly, she doesn't encourage deplatforming them, just not giving them a platform. Pretty big difference.
And of course I knew you would take offense to my calling him a raging sexist, but in this context I disagree, I don't need to be strategic on LP, this site receives too little traffic to worry about that.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On November 23 2017 01:54 Loco wrote:
If I recall correctly, she doesn't encourage deplatforming them, just not giving them a platform. Pretty big difference.
And of course I knew you would take offense to my calling him a raging sexist, but in this context I disagree, I don't need to be strategic on LP, this site receives too little traffic to worry about that.
I dont think you should refrain from calling him raging sexist out of deceptive strategy, I think you should do it to be more precise in your language and qualifications
I'm also against not giving them platform as I said ridiculous ideas should be exposed for their ridiculousness, not hidden out of fear because they might be attractive, forbidden ideas are far more attractive than openly ridiculed ones
The ridiculous ideas have already been exposed, but it doesn't matter, it's a cyclical thing, they always come back and the strategies change. You're saying that in an idiocracy like the one we have now, the best way to get rid of harmful idiots is to give them more air time, I don't think that makes sense. It only allows people who are "on the fence" an opportunity to be swayed. People are ridiculous and they fall for ridiculous things all the time, you have too much faith in "man as a rational animal". People go online and they find the things that will meet them at their level, they don't go online to challenge themselves and "find the truth". They obviously think they are doing that, but the way social media is structured feeds into this illusion and makes it very hard to escape the echo chamber people find themselves in.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Loco the rhetoric you're using completely disregards any other opinion that might have any ground before the argument has even begun.... it's a "lets assume this right" ----> conclusion based on a very wide chance that you're wrong
Also your approach handles the whole thing preemptively, completely blocking any individual from further progress, while Baal's is much more rational and socially acceptable on many levels, which makes your original assumption problematic
Right, we've already had that debate. You think it's worthwhile to consider that homosexuality might be a mental illness. Go ahead and discuss that and whatever else strikes your fancy with others, I won't stop you. I'm not shutting down any discussion, I'm just not interested. I think you have no grounds to assume the illegitimacy of people's identities because they deviate from the norm, which is how these arguments/conspiracies begin.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Again using the same rhetoric pretty badly, I don't really know why I even bother, have fun falling for the fallacies you so strongly condemn. The fact that you believe authoritarian measures are best just so dumb people won't be allowed to make mistakes is simply laughable, thats what your whole argument comes down to.
P.S. lol @ homosexuality could be a mental illness, I guess you didn't understand a thing from that thread.
Which fallacies? Which authoritarian measures? Not handing out an invite to someone from the alt-right on my platform is authoritarian? That's what I was arguing against, not deplatforming people.
No where did I say people aren't allowed to make mistakes. I'm arguing that these mistakes have been made already, and they would just be repeated. If you know that someone is going to burn himself and endanger the lives of others by risking an explosion in the lab by doing a dumb science experiment that someone already failed doing, would it be "authoritarian" of you to try to argue him out of it? Hopefully we can agree that it would be a really stupid and unnuanced position to argue that we should pretty much always let people commit their own mistakes because we can "Never be 100% sure that we're right". In some cases yes, in some cases no. That's why we debate, so we can look at the pros and cons and figure out which wager to make.
I understood you quite well in that thread and that's how I was able to argue you out of your position (by saying that it wasn't relevant, which you didn't counter-argue). If you're now doubling down on the validity of such questioning after admitting over there that you were basically wrong, I should be the one who says "why do I ever bother?". I get it, I sound too sure of myself and someone should "put me in my place", but that doesn't mean you should just throw empty criticisms my way like that. I can assure you that despite how I come off, I don't think I have it all figured out. In the last year I can name at least 10 things that are pretty major and which I've changed my mind about. This pronouns thing is actually one of them, if you paid any attention to when we first started discussing it, I was fairly neutral about it, I expressed skepticism that it was going to be particularly bad but I didn't have a strong stance at all. I researched it and spent considerable time learning from both sides for months. It's almost as if you assume that people who don't operate under the fallacy of middle ground are just always biased or not paying attention to the other side because otherwise they'd be in the middle. I hope I'm mistaken or that you will grow out of that kind of thinking.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
The conspiracy theorists claim that these “cultural Marxists” began to use insidious forms of psychological manipulation to upend the west. Then, when Nazism forced the (mostly Jewish) members of the Frankfurt School to move to America, they had, the story goes, a chance to undermine the culture and values that had sustained the world’s most powerful capitalist nation.
... the conspiracy says, they promoted and even enforced ideas which were intended to destroy traditional Christian values and overthrow free enterprise: feminism, multiculturalism, gay rights and atheism. And this, apparently, is where political correctness came from. I promise you: this is what they really think.
The whole story is transparently barmy. If humanities faculties are really geared to brainwashing students into accepting the postulates of far-left ideology, the composition of western parliaments and presidencies and the roaring success of corporate capitalism suggests they’re doing an astoundingly bad job. Anyone who takes a cool look at the last three decades of politics will think it bizarre that anyone could interpret what’s happened as the triumph of an all-powerful left.
It allows those smarting from a loss of privilege to be offered the shroud of victimhood, by pointing to a shadowy, omnipresent, quasi-foreign elite who are attempting to destroy all that is good in the world. It offers an explanation for the decline of families, small towns, patriarchal authority, and unchallenged white power: a vast, century-long left wing conspiracy. And it distracts from the most important factor in these changes: capitalism, which demands mobility, whose crises have eroded living standards, and which thus, among other things, undermines the viability of conventional family structures and the traditional lifestyles that conservatives approve of.
The story of cultural Marxism is also flexible and can be tailored to fit with the obsessions of a range of right-wing actors. As such, it’s one example of an idea from the extremes which has been mobilised by more mainstream figures and has dragged politics as a whole a little further right.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On November 23 2017 01:54 Loco wrote:
If I recall correctly, she doesn't encourage deplatforming them, just not giving them a platform. Pretty big difference.
And of course I knew you would take offense to my calling him a raging sexist, but in this context I disagree, I don't need to be strategic on LP, this site receives too little traffic to worry about that.
I usually stay away from Culture War shit, but in my experience most SJ leaning leftists absolutely love to give them a platform so long as it's a negative one. I wouldn't even know who people like Milyo Yihasiosanasio and Richard Spencer were if it weren't for blue checkmarks on twitter going insane about everything they do.
Tangentially related, as you're Canadian, did you hear the leaked audio from the TA who got admonished for sharing a Jordan P. video in a class?
It's definitely TL;DW, but it was just objectively fascinating to me. They basically bully her into breaking down and crying, and imo they knew exactly what they were doing. It happens by ~7:30 in so maybe can just watch the beginning. The most interesting part to me was around 22 minutes where she says "I presented both sides of the argument neutrally" to which the Dean or whatever immediately replies "that's the problem!".
It was tough to watch as a former humanities student, because I know that the type of people who teach these programs are doing this intentionally to punish her for engaging in heresy. Once in awhile you would come across a student like this in the humanities who believed in all the bullshit about Uni's being a place to challenge ideas and engage in uncomfortable topics and they would just get absolutely bullycided - not by students but by TA's, Professors and Admin.
Even when I bring this (my experiences in getting a Poli Sci. degree at the University of New Hampshire) up with people today many just flat out don't believe me and I find it a bit funny since I'm obviously not hyper political nor involved in academia anymore and really have nothing to gain or lose by exaggerating my experience. I took my studies seriously and graduated despite having a lot of poker success early in life, but it was just objectively a joke of an education. Anyone with a reasonable degree of social intelligence would recognize very quickly that all you had to do was write bland papers filled with postmodern buzzwords and attribute all disparities in outcome or really any social or political conflict to an intangible unquantifiable priviledge narrative with intersectionality nuances and you would be assured a B+ minimum. This was in 2008.
Ok sorry I went on a pretty long unrelated tangent there, but I just find it mind-blowing that some people still attempt to deny the extremely (relative to the societal norms) far-left bias in New World (and as far as I can tell also European) universities.
On September 08 2008 10:07 Baal wrote: my head is a gyroscope, your argument is invalid
United States. Nov 22 2017 04:21. Posts 8520
